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How to make your iPhone a hacker's dream machine |
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Source: InfoWorld - Posted by Dave Wreski
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Apple fans are often smug about their immunity to virus attacks on their Macs and iPhones. Well, these devices are hardly safe from viruses, worms, or other attacks, but it's true that they're more secure than Windows PCs. A recent report from antivirus vendor Intego shows how few attacks made their way into the iPhone and Mac worlds last year.
Except for jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches -- the mobile devices, ironically, aimed at more sophisticated users who are typically better at erecting security safeguards than the rank-and-file consumer. It turns out, jailbreaking an iPhone -- so you can use a different carrier and run apps that Apple has not approved in its App Store -- disables about 80 percent of the Phone's built-in security features, as hacker Charlie Miller reported at the SyScan security conference. Yikes!
And hackers are taking full advantage, Intego reports. A jailbroken iPhone is usually made accessible through an SSH (secure shell) Unix command, which can be invoked over the air, not just when the iPhone is tethered -- part of the jailbreaking process usually involves installing the OpenSSH utility. But few people who jailbreak their iPhones bothered to change the default password, and hackers quickly learned they could scan ports to find OpenSSH and log in to install nefarious software. (For the record, Intego notes that not all networks allow such access; those that use NAT, for example, prevent this kind of phishing.)
Read this full article at InfoWorld
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